Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid, Goatscapes follows a goat with a bell as it roams through a variety of locations from rural to urban, industrial to residential, low income housing to condos, developed to empty lots around the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. Watch Making Of

Commissioned Video installation that highlights the symbiosis relationship of learning between UC Davis’ animals & students as seen through a series of visual comparisons using the hoof and foot as a grounding point.

The Swimmer Oakland Museum of CA
October 26, 2015 - Feburary, 2016
The Swimmer features photos, videos, and sculptures that intertwine street and sea through endurance actions and the transformation of objects. Sollars created a waterfront studio in the Bayview and repurposed a series of barnacle-encrusted objects pulled in from the bay for use back in town. WATCH on Vimeo

At Recology, Sollars has turned cast off objects and scavenged garments into outfits, tools, and sets for imagined worlds. Wearable sculptures utilize backpack frames that support unusual cargo, and a series of double ended hand tools transform axes and shovels into humorous, existential dilemmas. Flickr

Sollars scavenged the Gospel Flats Farm, surrounding Lagoon, and Bolinas shore to build sculptures that float a selection of produce grown on the Farm. These stands highlight the form of Kale, Squash, & Pumpkin. Each sculpture is maintained by the farm with fresh produce.

This exhibition explores the continuing legacy of humor and absurdity in Bay Area art through the lens of a new generation of artists. In an increasingly fraught social and political context—both locally and abroad—many artists have turned to comedy to reflect upon and illuminate the absurdities of daily life. Includes The Swimmer 2013 and Wet Blanket CA 2015.

An exhibition documenting a series of performances that lead viewers to water thru the physical properties within the city of San Francisco that both comprise and compromise the watershed. Watershed is composed of: Creek Walks (Lead to Water) and Water Shed (On the Water).

The Swimmer features photos, videos, and sculptures that intertwine street and sea through endurance actions and the transformation of objects. In a large-scale environmental drawing, Sollars traverses the coast of San Francisco, dragging behind a pointed staff that literally draws a line in the sand. In another epic work, he revisits John Cheever's short story The Swimmer, navigating his way across the city through pools and fountains in a Speedo. Echoing the tradition of Venetian grotto furniture, Sollars created a waterfront studio in the Bayview and repurposed a series of barnacle-encrusted objects pulled in from the bay for use back in town..

2012

COFFEE & DONUTSSouthern Machine Exposure Project
Home of Bruce Tomb & Mary Sheppard
Tuesday June 19, 2012Utilizing this former Mission Police Station as a set, Sollars will activate the former station through actions, sculpture, and taste and make the inaccessible areas of the home visible through video.
Southern Machine Exposure Project is a project developed by Southern Exposure (San Francisco) and Machine Project (Los Angeles), involving 20 combinations of artists and performers from LA and SF, .

Multi-media installation using a dumpster as a play-set and landfill as backdrop, with videos of trash rain and Pile of Trash San Diego a Narrative following anthropomorphic Trash from Mirmar Landfill, through downtown San Diego to Balboa Park the former landfill.

In the mid-60s the Diggers in San Francisco proposed a form of ‘community anarchism’ in which they offered free food, medical care, and street performance. They also baked and gave away bread, and were rumored to have introduced whole-wheat flour into US counterculture. Artist Chris Sollars , Steve Sullivan from Acme Bakery and James Whitehead from Fist of Flour bake Digger bread in cans while David Simpson and Jane Lapiner recount stories from their experience as Diggers.

Sollars creates A Great and Mighty Walk along MLK WAY in 3 Parts
Instructions for connecting MacArthur B Arthur to their neighborhood block.

2010

2929 A Double Take A New Museum
Jan 1-10 2010
2929 is an exhibition using A NEW MUSEUM's address as a double take. Using his series of Public Sculptures made with ready-made-trash and debris on streets and sidewalks around San Francisco Mission, Sollars will be installing some of these recent creations in the Museum over the course of the two weeks.

Chris Sollars Glitter Box
August 7 - Sept 7 2010
A solo exhibition of sculptures, photographs, and videos installed in and around Ian Colon's apartment gallery Glitterbox in Oakland, CA. At Glitterbox, Sollars has mined Ian’s collection of works, objects, and archive into an exhibition that creates portrait of the artist, the owner and his space.

Chris Sollars - Museum Residency SFMOMA OPEN SPACE BLOG
August 20, 2010
This summer I invited Sollars to use SFMOMA as a site for art-making. As a parameter the artist used only materials on hand in the museum itself, from paper products, posters, debris left behind, to the shirt off his back. At no point was his project made official to the staff of the museum, similar to working in his neighborhood, Sollars came and went and made pieces while integrating himself as an everyday museum guest.

ri-FLEKT WEartspace
Oct 3 - Nov 20 2010
At WE, Sollars will create a series of works based on the interior and exterior of WE. Inside, Sollars will use images and objects from around the WE space as inspiration and outside he will utilize the Bus stop and neighborhood for a series of interventions, sculptures and videos. Watch the PROMO

Taking inspiration from Frank Zappa’s 1966 song Trouble Everyday Chris Sollars throws caution to the wind with facing current state of affairs. Through drawings, photographs, sculptures, and videos of critical humor, Sollars blurs the past with the present in his investigation with the troubles we find ourselves with 9 years later on September 11, 2010.

An exhibition that “addresses the anxieties of economics, environmental tragedies, and societies of control that define the chaos of globalization. It explores these social issues in an aesthetic way to demystify the notion of art only as an ornamental production.

PAPER!AWESOME!, a group exhibition of new works on paper by over 100 artists. Curated by gallery artist Brion Nuda Rosch, this exhibition contains over 300 8.5 x 11 inch brand new works on paper by an incredibly varied group of artists.

Together Hallway Projects (Arthur) and 667 Shotwell (Allan) investigate the domestic nature of each venue through new works within each other's space and in the neighborhood between each residence to create a series of collaborative works in varying media. Art Practical Review by Zachary Scholz

BrautiganHeadlands Center for the Arts, CASculpture & Video Installation Featuring 7 sculptures for 7 books by SF Bay Area art organizer and writer Richard Brautigan. Videos based on each book interrupt the live video feed in the space.

A flood with a bread dough levee is reconstructed in my bathtub, and is displayed on a TV monitor on top of its packaging box at waist high. A video projection of a jar of dirty water is shaken vigorously and appears sporadically.